Historical narrative, "society's rhetors," and AI

I'm going to have to sit with this for a bit to work out my thoughts about what's being suggested here:

 

The suggestion to create an app, an AI tool, "that makes a kid feel the weight of what already happened" has my mind spinning. In the context of talking about World War II, I know that directly communicating with the people who lived through the war is becoming less and less possible--I had four uncles who fought in World War II, and my father was in General MacArthur's Honor Guard in Tokyo after the war. They've all been dead for at least 10 years. 

However, there are documentaries, oral histories, histories, historical fiction and movies--probably even comic books graphic novels--many of which could be used to help "a kid feel the weight of what already happened." So while on the one hand, I applaud the idea of applying the latest technology to helping carry on public memory, on the other hand, I wonder if an AI app is really the best tool for this. Isn't what we want rather the voices of humans who experienced history or who have created nonfiction or fiction with the materials of history? If a machine can by itself manufacture something that can connect us empathetically with our past, our ancestors, I don't know if I should be impressed or scared. Perhaps as scared for what we've become as for what the technology has become.

I'm thinking about this point also in the context of the intro to rhetoric course I'll be teaching in the fall. This post brought to my mind something I read years ago by rhetorician Gerard Hauser from his book, Vernacular Voices: The Rhetoric of Publics and Public Spheres. Citing Paul Ricoeur, Hauser points to 

the fragility of rhetoric in a context so overrun by alienation and difference that one has difficulty locating compelling terms that might anchor society in the silt of cultural memory. At the level of praxis, society's rhetors are custodians of history's story. By giving memorable form to distinctive episodes and persons, they evoke bonds of communal understanding and sympathy that can frame common commitments and motivate common actions. The question we face is whether the distance between the contracting relevance of the past and the fading horizon of an uncertain future precludes the possibility that we can still establish bonds of community. (p. 112)

I'd add that in addition to what he calls "the challenge of a past and future moving in opposite directions" is now the question of who or what will tell history's story--and what difference it makes. 

I'm not sure that we will get into this in our course--I'm still working on developing the course, and these questions, while interesting and important, are perhaps not as central as the issues that arise from teaching an intro to rhetoric course in the US during the midterm elections. But I want to follow this thread and see where it goes. 

It's late now, and I might come back to tinker with this post some more later. 

Summer plans

The spring semester is over here--and just in time, as a hay fever-driven lethargy has overtaken me, making it hard for me to concentrate on whatever it is I'm supposed to be doing right now. I have two online courses to run in May-June ("Summer A," which used to be known as "Summer 1"), though, so I need to get ready for them. I've got one prepared, but I need to go through the other one and update it, and then make a few screencasts before classes start May 6. (I hope I can talk without sounding like I have a stuffed-up nose.)

After the Summer A classes are ready, I need to get back to work on preparing for a new course I'll be teaching in the fall: Introduction to Rhetoric. The regular professor is going to be on leave, so I'm taking over. While there are no set-in-stone content requirements, the course description reads as follows:

Introduces major concepts, traditions, and issues in rhetorical studies. Explores topics such as the range of ways that people persuade others to change their minds or take action; the relationship among language, truth, knowledge, and power; the role of language in shaping identity, communities, and cultures; and the use of rhetoric for activism and advocacy. Focuses on rhetoricians and rhetorics from diverse traditions, emphasizing contemporary and interdisciplinary approaches to investigating a wide range of rhetorical artifacts.

The regular professor has given me access to her materials, which are, of course, excellent, reflecting her years of teaching the course. I think I need, though, to develop the course in a way that fits my own expertise and teaching style. I'm working on that now, and I hope to talk to her soon to see what she thinks of my ideas. She might be able to help me avoid some possible wrong turns I'd take! More on all this in future posts, perhaps.

In addition to the course development, I'll be going to Taiwan this summer for a conference at Academia Sinica in August. I'll be part of a roundtable on "Oberlin Shansi in China and Taiwan: The Transformation of a Transnational Educational Mission." I'm supposed to talk about how martial law-era Taiwan and Tunghai University were depicted in the campus letters reps in Taiwan sent back to the Oberlin community. It'll be interesting to revisit that period of my academic life when all I seemed to think about was that hardy band of young Oberlin grads who were teaching English in Taiwan and teaching Oberlin about Taiwan. 

I might also try to do some research while I'm in Taiwan, but right now I'm not sure what I want to do research about. I was initially interested in the story of Ts'ai T'ieh-cheng (蔡鐵城), whom I first read about when working on a presentation about the White Terror for students who are going on a study-abroad trip to Taiwan this May. Ts'ai, who was born in Ta-chia (大甲) in 1923, reported for the Ho-ping Jih-pao (和平日報) in central Taiwan before becoming involved with Hsieh Hsueh-hung's (謝雪紅) "27 Brigade" (二七部隊) after the February 28 Incident. In 1953 he was executed. His story (here it is in Chinese, an excerpt from a book entitled 《二二八記者劫》) was very moving, particularly the part where he wrote a note to his younger sister the night before he died. 

A note that Ts'ai wrote to his sister the night before his execution: “Dear little sister: Do you know? On the night before I leave this world, you are my only companion. I took out your photograph and looked at it again and again. Ah, I hope—" And then the ink is smeared, perhaps by tears. Some believe the missing words were "that you grow up smart and beautiful."

I thought about doing more research on his life and his reporting. The National Central Library appears to have microfilm of the Ho-ping Jih-pao, so I might take a look there if I get a chance. I'm still working out what my whole purpose would be for doing this research, though. Maybe I won't know until I see the newspaper microfilm. That's how it goes sometimes, right?

Taiwan Studies+ 2.0 symposium reflection

Yesterday, I attended the "Taiwan Studies+ 2.0" international symposium at Harvard. I found all of the presentations really fascinating, even (especially?) when I didn't know anything about the topics. There were presentations about video games, noise pollution, Japanese-era mountaineering, representations of Indigenous people in ecological literature, capitalism, the "semiconductor shield," diasporic Taiwanese activism, ROC/Taiwan relations, and transitional justice, among other topics. 

Sitting there, I realized how much about Taiwan and Taiwan Studies I don't know. But it was an inspiring feeling rather than a depressing one. It reminded me that my own perspective on Taiwan--one that I've acquired through drilling down on a very niche topic (the life and writings of George H. Kerr)--is in need of these encounters with other perspectives so that I'm not stuck in my GHK bubble. Part of that is becoming more aware of how Taiwan is represented in various academic disciplines, not just history. 

One of the questions that came up in the final discussion was about the current status of Taiwan Studies. There was the positive feeling among participants that they don't have to explain Taiwan as much in their articles as they used to (what I've called the "shaped roughly like a tobacco leaf" approach to writing about Taiwan). At the same time, people expressed concern about how to represent Taiwan in relation to China and to global events, and one participant spoke eloquently of the urgency of representing Taiwan during a period of wars and the potential for war in the Taiwan Strait. I'm reminded of a rhetoric scholar from Hong Kong who wrote on social media a while back that a paper they had written about Hong Kong was rejected with the response that Hong Kong was a dead subject. Hopefully, this won't happen to Taiwan or to the people who study Taiwan.

GHK bio updates

A couple of updates about the George Kerr biography:

• We have a publisher! (I'm not going to reveal the details yet, though. I'm not sure we have signed a contract yet.)
• The MS went out yesterday to be reviewed. Evidently, though, we have more time to work on it as we wait for the reviewers' comments. (I have some hopes about some of the things I'd like the reviewers to say, but I won't go into that here.) 
• As I might have mentioned, this edition of the biography will be in Chinese. I'm hoping, though, that we will be allowed to have an English version done at some point. This is something we'll have to work out with the publishers, I suppose. If you have any suggestions for an English-language publisher, let me know!

OK, now that it's off to the reviewers, I should use the waiting time to get some grading done...

Brief interview for RTI's "Taiwan vs. the World" posted

Julien Oeuillet, who moderates the "Taiwan vs. the World" program on Radio Taiwan International, interviewed me for an episode about books to read to understand Taiwan. I'm talking, of course, about George H. Kerr's Formosa Betrayed. My interview isn't until 35 and a half minutes in, but I also enjoyed the interview with Jason Patterson and Matthew Ryan on marketing in Taiwan. It was quite informative!

Formosa Files interview about George Kerr and Formosa Betrayed posted!

I'm so far behind in posting this that the Formosa Files folks have already posted two new podcasts since my interview! But in case you didn't catch it, I was interviewed by John Ross about Kerr and Formosa Betrayed. The podcast (greatly edited but still a bit long at close to an hour) is here. While you're at it, check out their other episodes--they're always fun and interesting to listen to!

Things I'm not regretting

Spring break is almost over for me, and if I had one, my to-do list would still be full.

• I didn't clean my study.
• I didn't finish that humanities fellowship application.
• I didn't do our taxes.
• I didn't go to a Fairbank Center presentation about Taiwan's legal status.

I did finish grading (which is why I didn't go to the presentation). And I did do a little research for something we needed to add to a one of the Kerr biography chapters. In any case, though, I'm not going to regret not getting much done during my spring break. I got some rest, which is important. Next week it's back to work, and I think I'll be grateful for having gotten that rest.

[Update, 3/7/26: I did our taxes last night. It took only an hour and a half!]

Things I'm (re)learning

I'm working on an application for a Humanities Center fellowship right now--here's their blurb about it:

2026-2027 Theme: Revolutions

We invite applications for our second annual Global Fellowship Program focused on the theme of revolutions. A revolution signals a foundational shift in action and thought. Whether they take the form of political uprisings, social movements, or collective struggles, revolutions transform our understanding of the world and our place in it by remaking our epistemologies and modes of relating. The word “revolution” also carries a physical and astronomical meaning: a full turn, a return, or a cyclical rotation. A revolution can signal either a dramatic break with the past or the completion of a cycle. Hence revolutions can serve as an entry point to discussions about the nature of change, progress, disruption, and time in our societies. We welcome proposals for Humanities research projects that engage the theme of revolutions, broadly conceived.

Without going into detail about what I'm proposing (or trying to propose), I've come to some realizations about this sort of thing that I'm thinking of sharing with the students in my advanced writing class, who are also working on developing topics, research questions, etc. for their projects. As I wrote in my offline journal (the aforementioned "Thoughts and Frustrations," aka "A Record of My Decline") while I was trying to figure out my "aims" for the project, 

I think here I’m getting at aims (and maybe method, to some extent). What is my purpose? What kinds of questions am I trying to answer? It seems that part of the issue here is that I’m trying to come up with some sort of answer here already. A thesis rather than a research question. This is what I was talking to students about the other day. If this is a research project, I shouldn’t have an answer yet, should I?

It struck me that while I needed to focus on developing a research question, there is still a sneaky sort of thesis involved in that--the question of the significance of that research question. The "so what?" of it. As I put it later, "It’s harder sometimes to come up with a good question than it is to come up with a thesis."

Anyway, back to plugging along at this. I need to get it done by March 1(!), so I'm going to have to settle on something pretty soon.